In the course of the trials of Captains Trench and Brandon at Leipsic in 1910, the public prosecutor emphasised his view that British gold had bought up the services of hundreds of agents scattered throughout Germany, all of them engaged in the business of transmitting important information to the British Admiralty and War Office. Visitors to what is known as the Black Country of Westphalia will recollect, too, how ordinary English tourists who arrive at towns in the neighbourhood of Essen, the home of Krupp, such as Bochum, or Wesel, or Elberfeld invariably become the objects of police attention from the moment of their arrival at local hotels. It is certain that espionage on the part of the foreigner excites more real concern in Germany than is the case in England, a fact that we must put down to her geographical position which leaves her, despite vast armaments and preparations, an ever-possible object of attack to heavily armed nations which surround her on all sides. Even, however, if it be the fact that England has held her spies within Germany itself, few will be found to argue that it is not a legitimate use of secret service funds, as well as a matter altogether apart from the infamy which attaches to the person who accepts money in return for the betrayal of fatherland. It is, nevertheless, very questionable if any information really worth having, in the military sense, ever escapes the record of duly appointed military attachés, whose official existence dates from 1864 and whose admitted business it is to keep themselves professionally posted as to the resources of a possible enemy. In regard to Germany, it may be said that in the business of spying, she occupies a class by herself, since professional espionage is not looked upon by the people as in any way degrading or underhand. An easy tolerance of this kind towards a trade which is in itself intrinsically base cannot, it must follow, be without a corresponding reaction on the common mind in regard to spying for the benefit of foreign powers, and we may reasonably assume it to be the fact that in such cases the British authorities go far less frequently in quest of native spies, than the native spies come in quest of British gold. A sum of less than £40,000 is annually set aside for the purposes of the British Secret Service, according to official books. The smallness of the sum must clearly be some index of the limits of our secret-service operations, although no one is asked to suppose that the amount in question covers the entire expenditure made on account of useful information given up. Germany, it is known, makes a public appropriation of, roughly, £1,000,000 sterling for the secret-service system. Russia's budget for the same object amounts to £500,000, while that of France is less than £200,000, as far, in all cases, as public figures are available. The public appropriations do not, of course, reveal anything like the entire sums expended, the facts as to which could be realised only by a survey of the various accounts of consular offices and embassies throughout Europe.